Battlefields, turtles and beaches

Time has flown since I last had access to a computer...I've lost all sense of the days of the week, I know today is the 29th because it is Richard's birthday- more on this later.

So first stop after leaving the mountains was Dundee and a Battlefield tour with our esteemed guide Evan Jones. Well before I did this trip my knowledge of the Anglo-Zulu war was limited to the film Zulu... I can now say that I know rather a lot more...in fact so detailed was Evan's tour that I know rather more than I would ever have thought possible, after the 5th hour when he pulled out a makeshift map, started role playing and bringing out props I had to reach for my Biltong to keep up my strength. 3 hours later at Fugitive's Drift he was still going strong, ordering me to clamber over rocks to get the best photo opportunity  and suggesting further reading for us ( I would be amazed if there was anything else left for us to learn). We felt that we got our money's worth. Isaldwena is a sobering place which is much more like the landscape feature in that film, Rorke's drift is surprisingly small and compact but very interesting.

We moved on from Dundee after a couple of nights to the North East Coast. Richard and I had our first row on the way....captive in the car, there was no escape and as is so often the case it was a map related incident ( I have history here!!). Things resolved themselves with a bit of shouting, sulking and flouncing...I am an unpredictable bitch and Richard is a pedantic grandad....situation normal.

We found a nice backpackers in Kosi Bay, right on the border with Mozambique. We has a rather nice chalet, a couple of kilometres from a deserted beach with saltwater lagoons used by local fishermen and fabulous snorkelling. The backpackers was run by Ken a rather smooth guy from Joberg who managed to pay some attention to us when he could extracate himself from his 'friend' Candice who was visiting him. We went on a fab boat trip, accompanied by KenCan ( they had by now merged into one, with arms and legs entwined) where Richard the snorkell virgin was persuaded to give it a go and then was the last one to get back inthe boat. We also went to an isolated, deserted beach to wait for turtles to come ashore and lay eggs. We were very lucky here and within minutes of our guide arriving a loggerhead waddled up the beach metres from where we had been sitting and began to dig and then lay for us.....a truely fantastic experience...I was quiet for about 2 hours it was that good. KenCan lost interest after about 20 minutes and we were slightly distracted by the stroking and slurpy noises, luckily it didn't put the turtle off. KenCan left early the next morning, leaving us with the backpackers to ourselves and Richard, now a real snorkelling afficionado came down to the beach with me to look at the coral reef and the fish....he also came face to face with a Moray eel which gave him a bit of a fright but has not put him off.

We left Kosi yesterday and travelled down to Salt Rock, just outside Durban. We found a beautiful B and B overlooking the beach which by complete coincidence and rather bizarrely we discovered that KenCan stayed at the night before...small world. We are both happy here at the moment. It's Rich's birthday today and after this internet fest, ( his choice of activity on his birthday) we are going to find a nice place for luch in Ballito Bay....then off to the Snake Park.

Pretoria and the mountains

We left Gabs bright and early a week ago and travelled by the rather smart Intercape service to Pretoria. We mooched around a bit here, had a look at the Union Buildings which are impressive and enjoyed the fact that the whole grounds are now used by joggers-loads of people running up and down the steps and around the park.
From Pretoria we travelled to Harrismith where we were picked up by shuttle and taken the the ampitheatre back packers, just over the border into Kwazulu-Natal. We have had a fantastic time here, the accommodation was basic but clean, lots of nice home cooked food a bar (Richard particularly enjoyed the pernod :)) a pool and some lovely people. We did a rather long hike to Africa's highest water fall and had a dip in the pools at the top. This was great but after so many sedentary weeks I really felt the burn, luckily there were 5 doctors and 5 physios also on the trip so I felt safe. We had to descent the mountain on some little metal ladders attached to the rocks...I had a couple of fearful moments but Richard just skipped down, I was impressed. We also did a trip into Lesotho, high up in the mountains. This was great. The village we visited still exists in a semi traditional way-subsistence farming and a mainly tribal system and the backpackers uses money from the trips it runs to fund and rebuild the primary school.  We also had a morning absailing from some local rocks, which looks more dramatic in the photos than reality but was well worth doing.
I've really enjoyed our 6 days at the backpackers. We met lots of lovely people from all over the world-a retired (at 36!!) German policeman, a French Canadian ship engineer, who voluntarily looked at our pictures from the ship and was v impressed by our choice of travel, a nice young couple from Plymouth ( she had the extraordinary name of Kylie Rio !!) who will be in Singapore and South East Asia at the same time as me.... We thought we had put the memories of the safari well behind us until last night when Adrian, one of the main workers of the backpackers decided, unprompted to tell me all about his addiction issues, problems with his daughter and then other friends of his who had died. Richard unexpectedly went off for a cup of tea leaving me wondering if I had a label attached somewhere saying " Please disclose personal issues here" I finally escaped and sckulked in my room for the rest of the day ( actually Rich had locked me out of the room the night before after a Pernod fuelled evening, leaving me to sleep on the grass with a blanket so I was glad of the chance to reacquaint mysef with my bed.) So on the whole a v positive experience although I find the whole transient nature of backpacking a bit tricky, meeting people sharing a good time and then moving on can make you feel a bit lonely...it certainly reminds me of all my friends at home.

friends of his who had died  aughter, friends

Old friends, new friends and lots of animals

We are back in Gabs after 12 days of adventure. We've learned that expectations and reality do not always match up but in the end it doesn't matter because every experience is unique and in this case overwhelming and special.

So we arrived in Maun on October 31st and met up with Steve and his wife Maps. This was great, we all caught up from where we had left off, which was 2 years ago for me but 20 years ago for Rich. Steve is happily settled and Maps knew everyone in town so we had a real taste of Africa, with local food and some local night life.

After a a lovely night in a beautiful lodge, we set off with our guides and 2 support staff on safari. This is where the fun really started...some of it expected and some of it very unexpected and not always what we would have chosen. We visited 3 separate game reserves in the swamp area, Kwai, Savuti and Tchingapan. All were quite different and beautiful in their own way; Kwai had a variety of watery landscapes and some open areas, Savuti was less varied but we camped by the river which was lovely and Tchingapan was remote, very dry but lacking in other tourists, which was a treat.We were well looked after by the staff, who put up our tents, dug our loo and cooked delicious food on an open fire.Our guides were another story and by day 3 we had learned rather more about them than we had bargained for...professional boundaries were crossed quicker than we could say 'leopard at 3 o clock' and Rich and I found ourselves acting as both relationship counsellors and mental health practitioners as the situation unravelled- not helped by the quantities of gin, red wine and whisky consumed rapidly before our eyes.However as always this enhanced the overall experience, the non conventional approach to clients on safari meant that we saw far more than the average tourist and made the trip unique and more intimate ( perhaps sometimes too intimate. for comfort). A trip like this probably wouldn't be for everyone but it was probably the only trip Rich and I could have had.
So the wild life highlights were many and I have hundreds of photos and some rather nice footage of swimming elephants and mating lions. We saw loads of lions in all 3 locations, some we saw at night and then tracked them again in the morning, some were so close to our camp that we could hear them all night ( this was a positive experience!!). We saw  wild dogs, hyenas with a kill, jackals catching doves, millions of elephants and loads of different exotic birds and eagles galore.We fished in the river and ate the bream we caught-I really enjoyed this and might even fish again when I get home, we drove up a sheer rocky hill to watch the sunset,we saw some rock paintings and learned all about trees. It was GREAT.

We ended our trip in Victoria Falls Zimbabwe, which was surprisingly different from Botswana. The Falls were magical and well worth the $30 fee. People are very poor in Zim and so we got lots of hassle from people trying to sell us stuff, Rich found this harder to cope with than me and so I was charged to send them on their way with one of my big smiles. It worked well and we had a good time and some lovely local food at Mama Africa's- well worth a visit.

We're off again on Thursday. A night in Pretoria and then a week or so in the Drakensberg mountains-I need some exercise!!!